Description of data reanalysis of daily discharge and gauge height over the Amazon River Basin

The Amazon River is the world’s largest, discharging more water to the ocean than any other river. Study of the world’s freshwater resources becomes more significant with increasing awareness of global climate change and its potential effect on those resources and atmospheric forcing. In this work, a reanalysis of the daily discharge and gauge height data for 87 active gauge stations throughout the Amazon River Basin is presented. The data was originally obtained from the web site maintained by ANEEL – Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency. We describe the problems encountered in trying to use the original data and the assumptions applied in the reanalysis procedure. The reanalysis consisted of filtering inconsistencies in the comma (decimal) notation, filling in missing data, and replacing inconsistent data values by applying the assumption of a stationary Markov process. The reanalyzed data is available to the community through an anonymous ftp-site.